Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0018000, Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:15:44 -0300

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Re: Magritte and Pale Fire..dictionaries and expelled words
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SK-B [ to Jansy: are you aware that Zimmer Frames are walking aids for the disabled?]
JM: No! That explain P.Smith's allusion, then.

SK-B: Aunt Maud's 'intact room' ...It's clearly a difficult fad for the poor! The 'open index' is intriguing. We have all the _missing_ words between 'Moor' and 'Moral.' 'Moot' and 'Mope' spring to mind. Remember the vital importance of _absent_ clues! There may be scope here for cunning allusional stunts, comparing the M entries in Maud's and Kinbote's Indexes. NB Neither 'Maud' nor 'Aunt Maud' make Kinbote's index. Discuss. An early spell-checker I worked on would offer useful positional advice, such as: 'The word 'shit' does not appear in this dictionary but it would fall between 'shirt' and 'shiver.'

JM: Spurred on I decided to check the open dictionary I'd seen on my way to some other place.Found it and now I realize why it reminded me also of Shade's brown shoe left outside ( and Coleridge's flower, and La Veneziana's lemon...)
Keeping Stan's advice in mind: Remember the vital importance of _absent_ clues:

Aunt Maud's "verse book open at the Index (Moon,/ Moonrise, Moor, Moral)
Shade's, according to Kinbote: (he) " saw that the little table from his study upon which he kept a Bible-like Webster open at M was standing in a state of shock outdoors, on the snow (subliminally this may have participated in the making of lines 5-12)."

Funny story about dic-droppings bt. "shirt" and "shiver." Kinbote once complained that not enough attention was paid to magnificent words in Zemblan ( lots of sound, no fury but...) He cites an example: what can be more resounding, more resplendent, more suggestive of choral and sculptured beauty, than the word coramen? A sculptured coramen anyone?

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